


Endless

by WearingOutWinter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, in which I impugn the reputation of London's emergency services, mad love, traffic accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:25:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearingOutWinter/pseuds/WearingOutWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luna's always been a little odd. A little mad. A little delirious. Ginny was far from the first to notice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endless

Ginny’s hands are wet with blood, and her fingers are cramping from her futile efforts to stop the flow. Luna’s head is cradled in her lap, pale hair shining cherry-red where it lies piled beneath her neck. Luna never was careful enough when she crossed the street.

So Ginny kneels on the hot surface of the road and presses her fingers even tighter against Luna’s skin and feels each breath come more slowly, more shallowly than the last.

Ginny wants to speak, even if Luna can’t hear her, to say that everything is going to be okay now that Ginny’s there, that it’s her turn to repay Luna for all the times she took her in her arms and made everything better. To tell her how beautiful she is, how beautiful she always is, how strange and impossible and wonderful. How much Ginny loves her.

But Ginny can’t say any of that, because she knows that as soon as she opens her mouth, she’ll start to cry. And Luna deserves so much more in her last moments than the sounds of sorrow. So Ginny bites her lip and blinks the tears from her eyes and hopes in vain for the sound of sirens. (It’s a quarter past five in the afternoon in central London. The cars are packed so tightly that the ambulance would have to fly to get here in time.)

Ginny is about to give up, and draw in a breath that will become a sob, when she feels a shadow fall across her. She does not merely notice a dimming of the light, or feel a slight chill: she feels the shadow itself on her skin, soft and light, like velvet worn thin by time. In the instant before she looks up, she wonders if it might be the shadow of some kind of bird: she thinks she can make out the outline of feathers against Luna’s sky-blue shirt.

When she does look up, Ginny sees that what casts the shadow is not a bird but a girl, staring at her with wide eyes. She moves a little closer, and Ginny feels the shadow slide from her shoulders.

The witch blinks up at the intruder. She’s short, shorter even than Luna, and she isn’t dressed like a witch. She isn’t dressed much like a muggle, come to that: yellow raincoat over a strange mesh shirt, a skirt so patched there can’t more than a few inches of the original cloth left, and bare feet. Her hair is… probably blonde. Part of it is, anyway, while the rest is streaked with purple, blue, and copper-green. It bobs around her head like a gorgons’ snakes as she kneels next to Luna’s sprawled form. Her gaze flickers across Ginny’s face, and the witch gets just one good look at her eyes. One is bright, vibrant blue, like police-lights, but the other is as green as an emerald, and dotted with silver flecks that dart across it like fish in a pond.

There is something about those strange, inhuman eyes that dries Ginny’s eyes and stills her sob. Taking in the strange silence of the of the city around her, she says

“So… you’re Death, then?”

The girl with the strange eyes pulls a face.

“Hardly. I told my big sister to stay away this time.”

Her voice is as strange as her eyes. In the space of one sentence, it travels through a dozen different cadences, from casual indifference to trembling fright to shaky almost-laughter.

Ginny blinks at her.

“Who are you?”

The girl meets Ginny’s gaze again, just for an instant, before looking away again.

“You don’t know me, do you?” She reaches out and lays a hand on Luna’s chest, then snatches it away again, like she’s afraid of being burned. “But she does. Every day, for years and years and years now, I’ve been with her.”

Ginny starts as the girl whirls around, staring at something Ginny can't see, off down the street.

“That means she’s mine! You can’t have her. Not now! Not today!”

She turns back, breathing heavily, and Ginny feels a flicker of hope.

“Does… does that mean you can help her?”

The strange girl says nothing, only stares down at Luna’s face, shaking slightly.

“Please… if you can save her… if you can help her…” Ginny’s voice breaks, but she continues. “I’ll do anything, if you can just fix her.”

The strange girl looks up at her through her multicolored bangs.

“I like your hair.” While Ginny it still blinking at the non sequitor, she continues “I can’t fix her. I can’t fix anyone. But I can make her wrong in the same way she was before.”

She leans towards Luna, and lays a hand on her cheek. Ginny waits for something to happen, but the only obvious change is to the strange girl’s hair: it begins to recede back into her skull, going from below her shoulders to above the nape of her neck in handful of seconds. Ginny watches as it vanishes altogether. She wonders, absurdly, why the girl’s scalp isn’t paler than the rest of her skin. Then the girl’s hair is growing again, curling around her head like vines up an old house. But now, instead of blonde hair shot through with other, unnatural shades, it is a red to match Ginny’s own. When it has grown just long enough to brush her jaw, she leans down and kisses Luna.

Ginny watches as the color returns to Luna’s face, spreading outwards from her lips. The strange girl straightens slowly, her eyes closed. She runs her tongue over her lips, and remains stock-still for a few long seconds, like she’s remembering something. Then her eyes snap open and she scrambles to her feet.

“There. It’s done.” A quick glance over her shoulder. “And my sister’s gone. I should… go, too.”

She turns and starts to walk away, into the crowds of London. Just before she disappears, Ginny calls after her

“Do I even get to know your name?”

Not turning around, the girl shakes her head. Her reply is almost lost in the returning roar of the city:

“You don’t want to. Even I don’t, sometimes.”

In Ginny’s lap, Luna stirs. Her eyes blink open, she stands, and Ginny has just enough presence of mind to pull her back onto the pavement. After that, all she can do is stare, until Luna cocks her head to the side and asks if she has something on her face. It’s her voice that breaks the spell, and Ginny moves at last, reaching out to take the blonde witch’s face in her hands. But Luna flinches away, laughing, and asks her what she’s gotten all over her hands.

Ginny looks down at her bloody hands. But, instead of bright crimson fading to smudged and drying brown, she finds them covered in a thick, golden liquid. She lifts one finger to her mouth, and sucks the sweetness off.

“It’s only honey,” she says. “I can’t think how it got there.”

Luna accepts that, and if she notices that Ginny kisses her a little longer, and her arms wrap around her waist a little tighter, she says nothing.

Ginny, for her part, notices just a trace of honeyed sweetness on Luna’s lips. And she directs a silent prayer of thanks to a girl with strange hair, strange eyes, and a strange voice, who was, she must admit, more than a bit mad.


End file.
